Hello again Captains,

in this update we will dive into the big optimization of The Dawn, and I can now say Its done, this was the last time we touched that ship in regards of its overall design, that feels like a big relief considering its taken a while to get it right and up to my liking. Huge shout out to Vladimir Sitnik for helping out on both the texture work and the optimization.

So, lets dive into what we have been doing!

The Dawn

We realized the ship was a bit overkill in polys, so we managed to reduce these without the loss of quality with almost 60%. Which is huge, we also redid the textures on almost the entire ship, we removed some details and added some new ones that we thought fitted better and the feedback so far has been that it was the right decision.

Lets take a look at some of the before and after pictures.

We also fixed the overall shape of the ship, as if you can notice on the before pictures from the front, it should have been more round and accurate to a ship design. By doing this, the captains cabin also became a bit bigger which leaves more room for us to play with, we also moved the whipstaff from behind the mast to the front, so you will no longer see the mast right in front of you, even if that is more accurate for the model it was frustrating from a gaming perspective.

Cocca Veneta

Since we are finished with The Dawn, we also started blocking out the Cocca Veneta, and older 16th century ship. We dont have much update on that yet but here is some pics from the blockout process.

This ship has more rooms and a different steering system, it also has a front tower which was common in some of the earlier ship as they had a medieval touch on them.

Build Notes

-=- Version 0.5.2 Notes -=-

On our very placeholder menu we added a window for the changes that has been done with every update, so our testers can get a better look to what has been changed.

As of version 0.5, we've effectively rebuilt the game more or less from scratch to transition from a 'shaky playable prototype' to a more rigid development environment.
We've actually got more done than we had originally anticipated, which speaks to the fact the previous code base was not as bad as we had estimated (great!)

- Added lights for island 2 (light tower)
- Added NPCS + AI (they can walk, etc.)
- Added NPC ship + AI (navigator)
- Added NPC to interact with to initiatite trade with ports and other ships
- Added placeholder furniture customization mode
- Added rotation and velocity inheritance system for NPCs and player (while on ship)
- Added Water volume extrude (water no longer renders below-deck)
- Added Running
- Added cam limiters
- Added underwater camera render (if thrown overboard)
- Added crafting animation (wip)
- Added player objects (Lantern (lit), spyglass (camera), pipe)

- Adjusted night/day cycles and fixed rendering issues
- Adjusted player interactive zone
- Tweaked UI sort order (quest completion pop-ups on top, etc.)
- Calibrated horizon rendering and distance fog
- Prevented slippery deck under most situations
- Lit up the night slightly
- Removed all transparent shaders
- Added whipstaff hard lock
- Updated UI and info panels including F1 overlay
- Optimized lag (rendering)
- Updated sails procedural animations
- Reskinned islands (placeholder)
- Increase top-speed for current ship
- Improved NPC random-generation
- Polished ladders (wip)
- Added patch notes section in main menu
- Updated some of the trade goods icons
- Updated sounds
- Updated ship visuals
- Updated hands animations for player
- Updated NPC animations
- Decreased mouse delay

- Reimplemented quests, and added partial hunt whale quest
- Reimplemented and skinned the minimap system
- Reimplemented main menu and character customization (free flow)
- Reimplemented compass logic & waypoints system (tied to Quests)
- Reimplemented active stations (lanterns, bell, cannons, etc.)
- Reimplemented and calibrated audio ambiance system
- Reimplemented crafting and trading (entire flows)

- Fixed a number of issues with water physics and render
- Fixed an issue that caused a ship's physics to act inaccurately at the end of a 'high wave'
- Fixed Fiddler talking issues
- Fixed a number of issues with ship collisions
- Fixed issues with quest journal
- Fixed UI flow issues (locks)
- Fixed navigation leaning (Z,C)

93 feature tasks
212 internal bugfixes
26 external bugfixes

Crew

As we add more crew we want to make sure it all works, so a walking cycle was implemented which is still in testing and will need some adjustments. But as of now we can stop a crew mate and talk to him (We dont have the dialog in yet) and he will turn around and what to see what you have to say.

Eventually some oft he crew will have chores to do and you will see them going about their business trying to keep your ship afloat!

Figureheads

One of the artists working with has made some figureheads you will be able to craft. This will be done in blocks and later in development we want the option to change these out as you get more blueprints. Here is a process of the blocking process.

This will work with each block being visible at 25% - 50% - 75% - 100%

Trade

We have also added a bunch of new trade materials.

Fish, Cloth, Bricks, Honey, Wine, Meat, Beer, Spices, Hemp, Wool, Salt, Leather, Pottery, Skins

That is all folks, remember to check out our webpage

and join our social channels!

All the best!